The Falcon's Bride Read Online Free PDF

stood, her gaze locked with that of a ghost—a ghost that aroused her with a look alone.
    She swayed. Someone screamed. The sound rang in her ears. Had it come from her own parched throat? Thea saw no falcon, but the flapping of its wings was suddenly all around her. She blinked, and the specter was gone, taking consciousness with it. But the palpitating sensations in her most private regions remained.
    The scream came again as glaring white splinters impaired her vision, then the light failed altogether and Thea’s bones seemed to melt away underneath her skin. The salver and everything on it hit the floor before she did.

Chapter Three
    “So you, too, have made the acquaintance of our resident ghost,” Nigel said tongue in cheek the next morning. At his request, they had climbed up to the battlements after breakfast. He’d insisted that she accompany him there under the pretext of showing her the breathtaking view, but Thea surmised that the interview was to take on the form of a lecture, and she’d steeled herself against it.
    “Nothing of the sort,” she said. “Annie’s nonsense had my imagination playing tricks upon me is all. That and the gruesome tales you told at table last night were enough to make any girl swoon.”
    “Hm,” he grunted. “You don’t believe in ghosts, I take it?”
    “I’ve never given them much thought.”
    “Well, the servants in this house do, I’m afraid. Most of them are locals, and they are a superstitious lot. In these parts some folk still leave their front and back doors ajar at night to permit the fairies to walk through unhindered. Pay them no mind, and do try to control your imaginationin the future. That little scene on top of Annie’s hysteria won’t bear repeating. As it is, the unfortunate business will have them buzzing below stairs for weeks.”
    “I shall do my best,” said Thea, gazing out over the grounds. The falcon had returned, or another like it, sailing lazily aloft, dipping and soaring overhead as if it were watching them. Everything for miles was pristine white. Even the distant trees wore thick snow mantles. The snow had stopped, but the gray sky threatened more, bleeding from zenith to horizon like a watercolor painting. It outlined a distant mound she recognized as Newgrange, its menhirs and wet kerbstones silhouetted black against the drifts. Pulling the hood of her fur pelerine closer about her against the wind, Thea nodded toward it.
    “What is that place exactly?” she asked, hoping to divert his attention from the scolding he’d intended to deliver out of range of the others’ hearing. “You only touched upon it briefly when we passed it on the way here.”
    “Newgrange is our mysterious antiquity,” he replied, “a passage tomb constructed some odd five thousand or so years ago.”
    “A passage tomb?”
    He nodded. “An ancient burial mound, supposedly a link between the living and the dead, and a passageway to the Celtic gods they serve— An Dagda , father of all the gods and goddesses, his daughter Brighid , goddess of wisdom, Lir , god of the sea, and Balor of the piercing eye , whose own grandson is said to have put his eye out with a spear, to name but a few. There are several such in these parts. For centuries it appeared as nothing more than a hilly mound of earth. Then, when excavation began in 1699, the stone mound underneath and corbelled vault that forms the roof of the inner chamber were discovered.” He pointed. “Lookthere,” he said. “You can barely see . . . a circle of twelve menhirs surround it. Archeologists say that these curious upright boulders and the tomb itself were once the focal point of pagan ritualistic celebrations.”
    “Tomorrow is the winter solstice,” Thea remarked. “I want to see what happens.”
    Nigel seemed annoyed. “In all this snow? What ever for?”
    “I shan’t get the chance again for a whole year,” she replied. “I would like to be there at dawn when light fills the